I didn't really intend to plant sawtooths, but when I did a chestnut order once the nursery got mixed up and sent sawtooths. I immediately saw what they were, but since it was just a few trees I decided to just keep them and put them in the ground. The guy I got them from was a friend and only charged me 70 Cents apiece for them, so I would have felt like a jerk trying to return them. That was about 9 years ago.
This year is the first significant crop I have got from them. I would post some pictures, but the hotel I'm at seems to have some Internet problems. Last week they were still holding tight. I'm going to try to watch them this year and determine the drop times. My guess is that they will begin dropping mid October. My tallest sawtooths are probably 18 feet now and shaped real nice. If I don't report back later on drop time, remind me.
Funny how easy it is to mix them up. When the AU Buck IVs came out, and the wildlife group first started selling them. They didn't sell them as individual trees but in packages with other trees. I guess the hype around them with the limited supply helped them sell other trees. They were nice enough to configure a specific package for me but limited the number of AU Buck trees in the package. The put in a "sawtooth" oak to round out the package.
Well, this year, my sawtooth oak has several chestnuts on it! The seem closely related. An old wildlife grafter I know (Dr. D. for those who know him) who was kind enough to send me some of his best persimmon scions told me about a new grafting experiment he was trying. He was grafting chestnuts to sawtooth oaks. His belief was that they were closely related enough for it to work. He had several grafts take and later he told me they died after several seasons. The leaves look enough alike that I'm sure it is easy for them to get mixed up. I never noticed mine was a chestnut until it produced nuts.
Here is my experience with sawtooth oaks. I planted some many years ago on other hunting leases but don't plant them on my place now:
Drop time - the trees I planted dropped all their acorns and they were gone long before our archery season rolls around in early October. I now understand there are more than one strain of sawtooth oak. Someone (I can't recall who, either here or on the old QDM forum) was trading acorns from his trees that drop much later; Oct and Nov.
Production - They produce a lot of acorns for their size and produce at a much younger age than most of our native oaks. They are also more consistent producers. One role they can play is to buffer mast crop failures of native oaks.
Attraction - I believe tannin content is similar to most of our white oaks. It is hard for me to judge relative attraction since the strain I planted had all the nuts consumed by the time our native white oaks started dropping.
If you are going to plant them, be sure you know when they will drop. I would probably lean toward growing your own from acorns that come from trees that have the drop times you want. Strains and drop times are not well documentd.
Thanks,
Jack
